MIMA Salon – Web Analytics, Testing and Optimization

Jamie Roche, the founder and president of Offermatica, shared his thoughts on marketing approach to testing and valuable suggestions how to navigate political landscape. Plus, he happened to be an exciting speaker.

Some ideas from the event:

It is easier to test landing pages than home page (less politics and internal fighting)

Easy testing democratized the process; anybody who has an idea can test it. Earlier only ideas of top management were used.

What to do if “ugly one wins”… If an “ugly” version is liked by customers, it is preferred probably not because it is “ugly.” Discover why this version is preferred and make it “pretty” so everybody can be happy 🙂

General web page structure – 7 elements on the page and one of them is dominant

After one test Microsoft saw 300% improvement on a landing page

Convincing management that tests are useful: Offermatica made list of companies that did testing by the testing activity and the company that needed to be convinced was on the bottom. Executives don’t like to be on the bottom of the list… the list itself is not that important… 🙂

Testing concepts – revolutionary and evolutionary. Revolutionary changes are needed to determine if something drastically different works better; evolutionary changes are tested to fine-tune the change if it was successful.

Explanation of tension between IT and Marketing: different purposes. IT may not make mistakes; if it does, the company will suffer. Marketing must try new approaches what leads to acceptance of mistakes. If marketing does attempt something what can be a mistake, the company will suffer.

For success with any kind of testing, marketers need to cut through

Brand (slight variation that lift conversions could be eventually accepted)